A Super Quick Look At NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX TITAN X

Posted on March 6, 2015 4:40 PM by Rob Williams

When NVIDIA unveiled its monstrous GeForce GTX TITAN X earlier this week, I had guessed that it would be about two months before it launched to market. Well, on account of the fact that a sample hit our lab this morning, I think it might be a good idea to backtrack on that.

NVIDIA’s Jen-Hsun Huang hand-signed Epic Games’ Tim Sweeney’s TITAN X, but it seems he forgot to sign ours! Oh well – it should still be a fun card to test out nonetheless.

As covered in the launch post, TITAN X’s GPU is composed of a staggering 8 billion transistors. That might seem like a modest boost to the 7.08 billion the original TITAN and TITAN Black had, but what’s not so modest is the boost to the framebuffer: TITAN X packs 12GB of VRAM under its hood.

Hot damn. I still can’t get over that.

For TITAN X, NVIDIA has carried over its popular reference design that has graced GeForce cards since the 700-series generation. Unlike the TITANs to come before it, though, this one has a dark gray – nearly black – shroud.

It’s not just the color change that’s notable; so too is the fact that TITAN X doesn’t include the backplate that the GTX 980 does. Considering the fact that TITAN X has a much beefier chip than the GTX 980, this is a little interesting. It could be that this monolithic chip gets hot enough where the backplate becomes more of a detriment than a help. Or, it could be that while the cooler looks the same on top, it’s different underneath. Given we’ve yet to benchmark the card, it’s not safe to delve into that further at this point.

We’re not sure what NVIDIA is going to spec TITAN X’s TDP at, but if I had to guess, “250W” (admittedly, it’s not a hard guess to make). To power the beast, 1x 6-pin and 1x 8-pin PCIe connector will be needed.

NVIDIA’s TITAN X marketing made it kind of seem like the TITAN logo had a white LED backlight, but it doesn’t. Instead, it’s a metal logo that contrasts nicely with the rest of the card.

What did this post tell you that you didn’t know two days ago? Probably nothing at all. That’s something I can’t help, since NVIDIA is keeping tight-lipped on the rest of the card’s specs, such as core count, clock speed, and so on. Given the transistor boost, I’d guess that TITAN X would have 3,072 CUDA cores, and then drop about 100MHz on the clock speed of the GTX 980 (~1000MHz). That’s based on previous releases, and utter speculation.

What you can be sure of, though, is that as soon as we have more information to share, it will be shared. Stay tuned.

Rob Williams

Rob founded Techgage in 2005 to be an 'Advocate of the consumer', focusing on fair reviews and keeping people apprised of news in the tech world. Catering to both enthusiasts and businesses alike; from desktop gaming to professional workstations, and all the supporting software.

Jay Jardin

I am very intrigued by the reason for the titan line to exist. They do not cad like quadro, they do not game as good as the (ti). Outside of advertising I have trouble figuring out what the purpose of the Titan series has. Any ideas?

EN24

Best content creater card with that memory without question. Also anyone that had the braincells to unlock voltage on the first Titan could, and did beat the 780 ti in any benchmark.

Sedan Kampal

Its all about getting dem moneys Form the enthusiasts that want the best of the best now and have too much money and its a cheap alternative for prosumers that do compute tasks because oft its double precision performance

Science was one of them, media creation is the other. It’s when you want the CUDA cores without paying for the 3D processing licenses, 10-bit color and other licenses and certifications of the Quadro line, which will never be used outside of CAD. Companies and individuals can save over $5000, instead of opting for the memory equivalent but now ageing Quadro K6000. Speaking of which, that should be due a replacement soon.

When using a Video Rendering program, the Cuda, can be used in some Rendering programs, vastly accelerating the render over what was the traditional rendering through the CPU. For me, 3000 cuda is like a 10, or more, CPU core chip. The owners of the Video card process tie Vram and Cuda together so as to appeal to gamers, and those that model and render. The other option for modelers and rendering is to build much more expensive platforms (CPU’s) or/and even more expensive Vid cards (Quadro ect) with Precision points….. and then user is right back to huge costs for a product that may be more precise, but the Titans or ‘980’ line GPU render without “precision point’ seldom makes a mistake and monitoring inside the rendering UI can track ‘Mistakes’ on precision. Large scale ‘Video’ business can afford ‘not monitoring’/Quadro cards.

Titans can provide ‘Gamers’ with ‘future proof’ as to Vram. A lot of future proof and the different processes the card brings as to shading insures the ‘future’ well into Windows 10 and DX12. Where eventually this will lead to unified memory/vram on both Radeon and Nvidia cards and I would not be surprised, only one Card manufacturer in existence.

1ceTr0n

$1400 and you don’t give us a fucking backplate or glowing fan shroud? You asshats nshitia

ShaneMcGrath

You don’t want a back plate on that beast unless you are watercooling! It’s most likely still 28nm and they are squeezing every bit of power out of it, So it will be running hot and a backplate might be detrimental to it’s cooling.,

AMD MAYBE ,I SAY MAYBE GET FOR SCORE FASTER GPU,BUT ITS WATER COOL,AND SO TIGHT EVERYTHING YOU GUESS ROPS,TMUÄS AND GIGAHERTS,SO AMD HAS NO CHOICE,ITS MUST COOL WATER. EVERY1 GUESS ITS EFFIENCY, 400w IS CLOSE TRUE.

NO1 SHOULD SUPPORT THAT SHIT.NO,IF U LEAVE THI MODERN DAY 2010 CENTURY.